-Origin Space, Arceus-

“That Joltik is really…” I shook my head and watched as Lit flew into multiple explosions that filled the hollows along the walls of Midgar with blasts that didn’t ruin the structural integrity of said walls and returned ‘some’ of the territories caught in the blast back to being under that Merak’s control. “Quite interesting…”

A second later a bolt of lightning lit up the screen. Lit hadn’t evolved, though with how his 'hero' title was going he's more than surpassed the limitations to do so, but he likely just ate something he probably shouldn’t have. It might be making him a little... loopy.

“Ten equestrian bits says he accidentally found and swallowed Ramuh’s materia.” Tiamat said with several grins.

“Ramuh’s never been lucky, so that would be a suckers bet at best. Wise sure, but his luck is almost as horrendous as Pirate Jacky 'The Blackcap' Chickadee's and I would know as I'm 'a' driving force behind that curse, or worse… Celebi!” Hah, yeah that sounds about right Bahamut, how many times did I twist time and space to keep Celebi alive again now?

I’ve lost count after several trillion incidents over the last millennia or so, most of which included negative space wedgies. Which was odd for a legendary Pokémon specializing in 'time' manipulation.

I really hated getting negative space wedgies. Paradox time wedgies were even worse, especially if it was the looping kind!

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Upper City, Pom-

We had done as Dolly suggested with the first thought that came to mind, we poked a bear and what a poke it was…

We were flying through the streets at a fairly high speed and we were definitely being chased. Rain and cold air slapping at our faces in a stinging manner as we flew along the streets that were lit compared to the dark storming sky above.

I was looking out for Moby Dick, the large flying whale that breathes lasers and aquatic EP swarms, as we flew along. I didn’t see any large shadows in the sky above us.

Dormarch was ready for the fighting to begin, because there was no way we would out run an entire city loaded with EPs forever.

Dolly was actually concentrating on not flying into a billboard for Gysahl Greens or crashing us into a building.

Shanty was rather quiet as she clung to me and looking about, I can understand the sudden fear and paranoia when you were being chased.

“We’re about to come under attack.” Dormarch announced, but then he perked up a bit in front of me. “Turn to the right, but keep flying in the same direction and angle the right shoulder launcher between thirty degree and forty five degrees in the next twenty seconds Dolly.”

“Uhhh…” Dolly didn’t seem to have an idea of how far we should roll, I sent her the general idea and used the angle of a skate park ramp to give her an idea. I understood Dolly quite well that I could make it easily understandable what Dormarch wanted her to do “Oh right, got it!”

We rolled and got the right shoulder missiles angled correctly, I kept my eyes forward while Dormarch was waiting for the right moment.

Dormarch dumb fired the two missiles from the shoulder and they flew off between a pair of buildings through an alleyway, timed precariously to avoid hitting the walls and possibly blast us off course. It was impressive considering how fast we were moving as Dolly righted us in the air, the shots look like they were angled and arcing to hit the massive tower in the center of the city in the distance correctly. We wouldn’t be able to stop and watch them to see if they hit this time though.

“Incoming!” Shanty stated as Heli-troopers rose up ahead of us as we turned back to facing forward.

-Metal Hound 002 (No Canopy, no problem) Vs. Midgar Aerial Forces, (Music: Target Town/ Stage 2, Captain America and the Avengers Genesis version)-

“Dolly concentrate on flying, we do not want to be in the open above the buildings… nor do we want to slam into them at the speed we’re currently going.” Pom stated with a clear worry about the anti-air defenses that tried to shoot down their first volley and the possibilities that there were more in the city to aim at anyone flying too high. “Dormarch, if you need a firing angle we’ll try to give you another one, but I think we’re done taking shots at the tower. Otherwise fire at will. Also this is to both of you, please work together and don’t squabble while we’re moving who knows how many miles an hour through the air.”

“Roger Radcliffe… wait, why did I say that? I don’t know anyone named that.” Dolly looked confused and shook her head as the Metal Hound 002 slowed down and five Heli-troopers flew forward, flew backwards and down bit, then charged towards them with their helicopter bladed gauntlets leading the charge while firing wildly from the gun on the other gauntleted arm.

The Metal Hound 002 avoided the shots and then blew away the five heli-troopers in short order with machine gun and cannon fire from the left and right arms. A second set of five troopers were soon blown away coming from below and flying upwards in the same zig zag pattern.

That was the end of the formation flying enemies as Heli-troopers were trying to come into the air in front of the Metal Hound 002 at random from the streets and were just as quickly gunned down along with a few Moon Cell Watchers.

The bright sparks from their projectiles bouncing off the armor made Pom wince as some of said watchers managed to fired off slow beams that were quickly dodged before the eyeball shaped things were swiftly blown apart.

It was a good thing the streets were wide enough that dodging wouldn’t do anything unless they were unfortunate to hit a street light. Dolly had their flying covered, except for one thing.

“Too high, dive.” Pom stated blandly as her eyes continued to flick back and forth in the neon lights of the buildings, using the visor she wore to pick up enemies they couldn’t see outside of the light pollution from the buildings and street lamps passing by below. The lack of canopy and a heads up display would have made it hard to keep up with their enemies, but Dormarch had the weapons working soundly as far as the accuracy went and was using Pom’s sight to take aim at the incoming enemies. Managing to shoot down swarms of Heli-troopers before they could become real problems. “Now please before we’re hit.”

Dolly dove Metal Hound 002 from hovering around half way up the nearby sky scrapers, it was a good thing they did so as hundreds of shards of glass started being blown out from the nearby windows of the buildings as a pair of gunships flew sideways firing straight through the buildings at them.

The three propeller hovering egg shaped machines with two machine cannons had the firepower to chew through the Metal Hound’s armor if they weren’t dealt with quickly enough.

This slowed down the Metal Hound 002 enough that the gunships flew onto the street from the left and right and were flying backwards while keeping pace as they aimed their machine cannons at the flying armor.

Pom quickly took control of her right leg and brought the Paralance forward over her right shoulder to soak up the massive number of incoming projectiles aimed at the seat. It exposed them all to some of the chilling rain and made Shanty a little busier with keeping it off of them.

Dormarch launched five missiles from the shoulders of the Metal Hound and they streaked forth, he had quietly switched them back to being capable of tracking targets as dumb firing them was only for the added range that one could feasibly squeeze out of them.

Four of them were swiftly shot down under the tirade of the gunships, but one of the missiles blew off a propeller of a gunship on the right and sent it spiraling into the other on the left causing them to explosively crash into the streets below.

The explosion forced Dolly to fly the Metal Hound 002 higher as Pom propped the paralance back up to pointing skywards.

“You’d seriously think there would be more than this…” Dolly grumbled, then hundreds more EPs started appearing everywhere, a lot of them were Watchers and they all seemed to be glaring at Pom specifically.

“DOLLY!” Pom, Dormarch and Shanty stated in an angry tone.

“What… oh, right, but that really shouldn’t have counted as fate tempting… am I right?” Three groans met Dolly’s attempt at playing off what she just said, after a moment she wilted as she saw what was coming out of the sky at us. “Right, my bad.”

Dormarch was already chipping away at the numerous Watcher’s trying to shoot them down.

Eight streams of shots came from above and Pom was glad she put the paralance back in position as the entire machine rocked and shook with a few shots to the flight pack.

Looking at the ground they could see a lot of Brutes below just waiting for them to crash, above them they had four gunships firing from the two machine cannons each one was loaded with. No Heli-troopers, probably because of how ineffective they proved to be against the Metal Hound 002.

Quickly aiming both the machine gun on the left arm and machine cannon upwards, Dormarch started to return fire as Dolly swerve wildly through the streams of projectiles and while flying higher or lower to avoid them.

“It’s not easy to aim these things you know!” Dormarch complained.

“Yeah, well I’d like to see you try flying this thing without getting us shot!” Dolly stated back while avoiding the incoming fire.

“What did I say?” Pom stated sternly after they narrowly avoided a billboard hanging across the street and both canines were quickly cowed by the tone and soon working together perfectly.

Shanty quickly formed a bubble from the raining water and slowed down the bullets that managed to get through the evasive maneuvers to ease any damage that would have been done to the Metal Hound 002 otherwise. It was easy for Shanty since she didn’t have to move or go anywhere and she just had to keep up her concentration to form the shield of liquids around them.

“Shanty, you can cover the body and legs, but pull back and keep the water away from the weapons please, we don’t want to dampen our own firepower.” Quietly responding to Pom’s request the bubble, Shanty covered just shrunk around the where the canopy was and extended down to the legs, but didn’t cover the arms, shoulders or flight pack of their machine. “Come on guys, get it together.”

Dormarch finally managed to shoot down one of the gunships and heavily damaged another, when a swarm of Moon Cell Watchers hovered in blasting energy at them.

Only some of the shots were redirected by the water Shanty was concentrating on controlling and the others missed or slightly heated up the armor to a degree where it might start melting, she was better at stopping the lasers than the number of projectiles attempting to puncture the already damaged armor. A lot of the kinetic projectiles missed entirely and those that hit mostly hit the armor

Metal Hound 002’s armament continued to quickly chewed through several of the Watchers, one of them exploding caused another gunship to crash into the street below where the sounds of engines could be heard coming up from behind, but below them?

Several shots pinged off of the flight pack as Dolly tried to avoid taking any more damage to their back, at least the propeller seemed to be heavily armored and the pack gave them something of a turtle shell to take damage with. They did not want to fall out of the air here.

“We’re being hit from behind and above!” Shanty announced as she ducked down as much as she could from Pom as shots managed to get between the paralance and the top back of the seat. “There is being more of those things coming up on us fast too.”

Pom idly wondered what she was hearing from below, but it was probably not something good.

“We’re not nearly fast enough to evade this many EPs for long.” Dormarch stated as even more gunships started chasing us down as he finished off the last one in front of them with a three missile barrage from the left shoulder.

“Dolly left turn, head for the outer edge of the city.” Since they were already under attack, Pom decided she might as well see how Ocellus was doing as they turned and seconds later the enemies on their tail followed trying to blow up the flight pack on the Metal Hound 002 with concentrated fire and took a moment to reorient and continued giving chase. “Ocellus this is Pom, how are things going with you? Oh us, we’re under constant assault and we got some chasers… so no, not good at all. We’re currently swinging our way towards the outer edge of the city, why? Turrets to prevent anything from flying into the airspace so no go for us… huh… really? Well we would like that… when we can get a moment where we aren’t busy with not dying and getting constantly swarmed! I’m surprised we’re still capable of flight as the flight pack is smoking… another left turn Dolly and don’t go entirely into the outer edge of the city! Call it a hunch, but I think it would be a bad idea for us to be flying in open airspace around the edges right now. If they have cannons outwards and downwards I wouldn’t be surprised if they had cannons pointing straight upwards that we’re not seeing too and we wouldn’t survive a shot like that.”

The Metal Hound swung around a street corner, swerving in the air and dipping until it was now flying counter clockwise along the long slowly curving streets through the with the chasers still shooting up the armor on their back.

A revving noise was heard from below and a motorcycle, being driven by a trooper, rode up the side of the building to the left of Metal Hound 002 and kicked off the corner of the building to come flying at them directly. The Trooper EP was wielding a long sword instead of their general all-purpose machine gun and was readying it to swing at them.

Shanty quickly gathered the protective water from around the machine and the rain, then lashed out her left hoof to send a water blade that sliced the Trooper completely in half before they could get close enough to attack.

The trooper was successfully stopped, but the motorcycle was apparently manufactured as it didn’t dissolve into a cloud of digital energy and struck Metal Hound 002’s left leg and almost spiraled Dormarch out of the seat.

Pom grabbed onto Dormarch with her chest wool and Dolly tightened Pom’s grip on the control as the wool tightened around her hind legs. Shanty’s rear hooves quickly slammed into Pom’s back, the wool took the shock of the impact and she was clamped in as well so they all didn’t fall out as they spiraled towards the ground for a few seconds.

“Okay, not going to lie, that motorcycle sword guy was kind of cool...” Dolly stated as she managed to right the machine and keep it from hitting the wet streets. They quickly saw as much as heard even more Motorcycles catching up on them and rose the Metal Hound 002 a bit into the sky as the Motorcycles started to ride the walls and kick off the various buildings at them. “I take it back, I take it back!”

Shanty took up the cane scythe and readied it to start swinging.

“How are they doing that with those motorcycles?!” Obviously Dormarch never subscribed to surfing ninja monthly or parkour with vehicles for wild driving weirdoes.

Dolly veered left as Dormarch pointed the right arms machine cannon into an aggressive group of motorcycles coming from their right, while Shanty kept firing water blades by slinging her cane scythe into the rain at the ones leaping at them from the left.

After gaining some quick authorization with the connection of their bond, Dormarch let Dolly have control of the left gun when she communicated a quick need for it as several Moon Cell Watchers dove into their path from ahead and above.

Dolly focused on the Moon Cell Watcher’s down, the ones coming at them in waves, with the machine gun on the left arm while trying to steer around the volley of shots coming from all sides. Even some of the motorcycle troopers, the ones that weren’t flying up the walls to get at them, were trying shoot them down with machine gun fire from behind before ramping up a building and pulling a sword out to take a swing at the hapless team of unfortunates that kicked a wasps nest.

Pom was the only one paying attention to where they were going and the Gunships still bringing up the rear and unloading into the flight pack trying to disable it. Dolly was keeping the Metal Hound 002 on course according to which direction Pom needed her to fly in as she concentrated on taking care of the Moon Cell Watchers.

“Can’t talk Ocellus, surrounded by EPs and they are throwing motorcycles at us… quite literally now!” Pom sent Dolly a quick and quite curious mental command, but the Dalmatian wanted to already do it just because it would look cool.

With a barrel roll, a swoop to the right and rolling sweep up and upside down before moving back to the left before righting, they avoided the motorcycle riding trooper thrown by one of the Brutes below them.

The Trooper on that motorcycle had still been shooting at them as it was thrown too, just to make it an even more ludicrous form of attack. It wasn’t any less ludicrous than the motorcycles being capable of riding up buildings and launching off at Metal Hound 002 while keeping pace with the flying armor.

Pom silently wondered if anyone had to fight in these conditions before Moon Cell recreated this realm as they avoided three more thrown motorcycles and Dolly got a luck shot on the gas tank of one that made it go up in a quick fireball.

“Mom, the flight pack is getting seriously damaged, we can’t keep this up forever!” Dormarch shouted as he stopped yet another thrown motorcycle from colliding with them, mostly by making it blow up with missiles.

Said explosion rocked the Metal Hound 002 in the air as it flew through the slightly scorching heat, the flight pack even stuttered a bit dropping them down slightly before restarting and getting them back up to where they were in the air.

Inhaling slowly Pom’s eyes were darting about everywhere and she blinked and looked left twice, she silently got Dolly to turn left onto another street and then entered the flying Metal Hound into a hard right to start flying under a highway. Shanty held on just fine, even if she was in the middle of taking out a Moon Cell Watcher that was threatening to ram them and sliced it entirely half.

They had managed to make the maneuver, but their speed dropped dramatically from the hard turn that had them flying underneath the length of a highway. Several things exploded behind them, likely a few motorcycles that couldn’t pull off the hard right turn and they weren’t willing to look back to find out, much less stop with this many enemies trying to get them.

“Well there’s goes my heart…” Dormarch stated with wide eyed fear as he turned the right machine cannon on a gunship and dropped it from the air by blowing its front two propellers off with some focused fire. “It jumped right up and out of my throat.”

“…” Dolly didn’t say anything boisterous or upbeat, she had a look of concentration that was seldom seen on her face and she was looking for something from above in the stormy skies beyond the highway above them.

In fact Pom, Shanty and even Dormarch started hearing that something as they all quieted down.

“What…” Was all Dormarch managed to get out before Dolly stopped them dead in the air and flash of a red energy flashed by in front of them, then Dolly turned the machine up to three fourths throttle to continue flying forward.

Both Dolly and Pom were quiet as they didn’t see what had passed by them, but it was far faster than Metal Hound 002 going at full throttle. An entire build practically evaporated and collapsed behind them.

“Was that?” Unintentionally Shanty finished the statement as she barely saw the indistinct blur they barely avoided.

“I think that was Merak’s answer for us firing missiles at the tower finally showing up…” Pom stated as Dolly had her body pushing the throttle to put the flight pack to full burn, as a higher power machine cannon started firing at where the Metal Hound 002 was going to be if they hadn’t flown upwards and to the right of the highway to put it between them and the deadly weapon. Parts of the highway were shredded or falling in massive chunks by the overpowering machine cannon fire as it absorbed it. “And there’s two of them... of course there is.”

At a high speed the two things spiraled downwards around each other, they eventually slowed down and slowly turned to face those in the Metal Hound 002 while flying backwards to slowly hover in front of it with relative ease.

The two machines were having no problems keeping up with the flight pack equipped machine.

Their jets were giving them far more speed and stability than the Metal Hound 002 currently, Pom knew this was going to be a very bad fight given the singular limbs hanging from both of the two similar machines were each holding two different powerful weapons in their single hanging claw.

The black with red lining one was holding a large red energy sword in its claw and the other a blue with yellow lining one held the massive machine cannon, both had white highlights and faces with vibrant green eyes that stared at them blankly. Lightning flashed behind the two lighting them up with a backdrop that made them look quite dangerous.

They both feature the large armored triangular wings with jets were extending slightly upwards from their fish like bodies that looked like a dolphin without a tail unless the dangling arms holding the weapons were their tails.

If they straightened out the one arm holding a weapon straight out behind them and the upwards angled wings moved downwards, they’d look something like flying manta rays. They also looked like winged dolphins and their resemblance to hawks staring down prey was quite unnerving.

Dormarch seriously doubted they could outrun or even fight these things with how fast they had been when they arrived. Dolly was utterly silent and focused on the two and narrowed her eyes as they started to shift about in the air slowly circling one another while preparing to come for them.

-Damaged Metal Hound 002 crew vs. Einhander Twins (If you meet Black and Blue, you’ll soon be dead all over). Music: Crazy Motorcycle Chase Remake, Final Fantasy VII/7-

Dolly slammed them to the right between some buildings bouncing them off one of the walls of an alleyway to avoid the machine cannon fire coming from the blue Einhander.

The buildings didn’t make for very good protection though as the projectiles from the heavy machine cannon seemed to ignore their existence by piercing right through them and chased the Metal Hound 002 towards the end of the alley.

Dolly stopped them short of the alleyways exit as the beam sword cut through matter evaporating it as if it never had existed without slowing, she full throttled it afterwards.

The Metal Hound 002 almost slammed into the street when the beam blade came around faster than Dolly though it would and slammed down on the Paralance from above. The paralance didn’t get scratched in the slightest and Dormarch managed to score a glancing blow with the spinning saw under the machine gun.

The blow wasn’t to the black Einhander attacking them, but its weapon, the damage was minimal as the Metal Hound 002 tried to get away in the streets.

The black Einhander shot forward and angled the energy blade at the flight pack while firing a single machine cannon fire from its back above the rounded white head at the front of the machine.

Dolly veered out of the way of the cannon and the blade was about to enter the flight pack and end their chances of escaped, Shanty created a clone out of water, with a clone of her scythe and sent

The clone made the Einhander rear up and turn it into steam on contact with the blade, Dolly swung the Metal Hound 002 to the left and upwards towards where the blue Einhander would be. If she had stayed low she would have been shot by it, instead she flew over it avoiding the heavy machine cannon fire from its held weapon and the machine cannon from its back.

Dormarch returned fire and not a single shot hit as the thing dodged the streams of projectiles with incredible speed while turning around.

It wasn’t long before the blue Einhander was aiming said heavy machine cannon at their back and something exploded and the flight pack was now not just smoking, but billowing clouds out as the building piercing bullets went through something.

It hadn’t knocked the Metal Hound 002 out of the air but it had dropped them quite a bit as Pom’s nose was almost ground into pasted by the asphalt before it slowly rose back into the air.

“Not good!” Dormarch stated as he looked back at the flight pack keeping them in the air.

“I think we may be leaking something, there’s a funny smell coming from the back!” Shanty stated as she slung another wave of cutting water out and watched forlornly as the blue Einhander dodged without trouble.

The streets were being torn up behind them and a pair of motorcycles riding troopers rode up to them only to be taken out by quick flying water slashes by Shanty before they could capitalize on Metal Hound 002’s lowered height.

Shanty then sent a slash back at the blue Einhander catching up to them and getting closer, it blocked the attack with its weapon. It then started to fire to the left or right of them as Dolly veered to the left and right to avoid the shots while looking over her shoulder.

“Trying to bracket us in, why would it…” Pom stated as her eyes watched a barely visible shadow dove at them from above at an insane speed and then leveled out and ignited the red beam blade weapon as it came at them.

The Einhanders were learning about their target and though their target seemed easy to take down, they weren’t going to rush in blindly. Their targets did have some danger.

Dormarch had the machine cannon on the right arm spun up and firing at the Black Einhander that just used its blade to cleave through the projectiles with several rapid swings.

Dolly’s eyes looked at the street and she had a though before the Black Einhander could hit them with the obvious incoming side swipe.

Cutting the throttle on the flight, the Metal Hound 002 slammed into the street and started hydroplaning.

Dolly managed to not only keep it upright with a spinning pirouette temporarily shifting to walk mode to do this, she also ducked the armor under the horizontal red blade swiping overhead as the Black Einhander shot by.

While they were still skidding on the surface of the streets, Dolly turned them so that she was giving Dormarch a shot on the blue one.

Dormarch started firing both guns on the Blue Einhander to make it dodge the incoming fire deftly without a problem as it continued to evade the hundreds of shots in a seemingly effortless manner.

“They’re too fast, what are these things?!” Dolly stated with a worried tone as she switched back to flight mode.

“I can’t hit them, they can change directions on a dime!” Dormarch stated still trying to land at least one shot in one thousand rounds spewing in the general direction of the blue Einhander.

“Enemy scanned, name: Einhander, single manipulator arm autonomous small jet fighter drone with possible larger scale version that can include a single pilot. Inferring function… high speed assault platform air superiority unit. Built in weaponry involves a single machine cannon along the dorsal spine and one claw for specialized weapon wielding, utility and combat applications.” The Yggdrasil.sys loaded in Dormarch’s digivice unhelpfully stated after having scanned the dangerous target, even if they knew the names of these things that didn’t help them at all in dealing with them. “Focuses more on high speed evasion than armor, highly aerodynamic, lack of armor is likely what gives it its speed… likely uses available held weapons in grapple claw for defense if possible if it cannot evade attacks. Units do not seem to be effected by weather, resistance to magic is unknown.”

“That is being oh so helpful.” Shanty stated sarcastically as Dolly switched the throttle back on and they lifted off the street to shoot sideways into an alleyway to avoid the rain of heavy armor piercing machine cannon as the Einhander returned fire that followed them down the alleyway through the buildings.

“Actually it is… Dolly, more crazy maneuvers like that skating along the wet streets, I don’t even know how you managed to keep us upright through all that! Dormarch, don’t even try to predict them or where they’ll be, we have missiles make them do unconventional things with our weapons! Shanty, get weird with your magic, if you start running out of energy then drink some Ethers in the pack on my back!” Three of Pom’s family was crammed into Metal Hound 002 with her at the moment and she would rather nobody get grievously harmed before she does, she was belting out these orders as the approached the other end of the alleyway and mentally warned Dolly not to get close to the exit. The black Einhander wasn’t as silent or stealthy as it thought it was being. She also originally stocked up on those Ethers for Dolly’s used, but any of them could use them. “Sorry Dolly, but the Metal Hound might not survive this.”

“Aw…” Dolly whined as she stopped their sideways momentum and started flying them straight up the side of the building before they reached the end of the alleyway and turned Metal Hound 002 towards the alleyways exit.

Dormarch fire off five missiles at the end of said alleyway, as a red energy blade held by the black Einhander cut out large chunks of the surrounding building out.

Both Dolly and Dormarch had kind of saw that one coming.

The Einhander flew away as the missiles lit up the alleyways exit with set explosions from the proximity missiles that blasted a wider hole in the surrounding buildings. Dormarch tended to take his mother’s words to heart about getting unconventional and the missile launcher ammo’s code could modified by him easily enough on the fly.

With the explosions, Dolly set them on flying forward instead above the rooftops where a stream of heavy machine cannon projectiles started tearing through where they were heading. They veered onto highway and went under an underpass. Any underpass that suddenly had a lot of holes in it from heavy machine cannon fire of the massive gun the blue Einhander was wielding.

They were in the open as they moved along the highway going in a clockwise direction through the city once more, the overpasses provided little cover from the assault of projectiles slamming into the flight pack.

At least it was the machine cannon fire hitting them and not the heavy machine cannon as Dolly was flying them far too close to the road for comfort. A moment late Dolly had oriented them into skidding along the highway upright on the Metal Hound 002’s feet while they were still in flight mode.

“Horizon!” Shanty shouted attracting Pom’s attention, this time Shanty decided to not scream ‘Totsugeki’… instead she had invoked the name of her personal dolphin summon.

“SqueeEE-~!” Nothing said surprise like taking a summoned dolphin missile, the colors of the setting sun, directly applied to the face.

The Blue Einhander spiraled out of control from the sudden shock of being unable to dodge the instant sea creature from out of nowhere and hadn’t seen it coming. The portal and launch of the dolphin had been so insanely fast that it couldn’t react in time.

Horizon’s skull managed to damage the monstrous mechanical drones right green eye, making it flicker out as the armor around face plate and head of the dolphin body cracked.

The blue EInhander fired on said dolphin as it fell away after the damaging impact with both its guns. Only for the dolphin to disappear in a shower of magical sparkles, all the while squealing joyfully as it did.

“Dolly.” Pom had saw something interesting about ‘Horizon’ and she really needed to have that talk with Shanty, she silently told Dolly to do something if an opportunity arose.

The black Einhander was coming down at them from the front as they flew along the road and it was coming up fast.

Pom hadn’t seen any sign of Moby Dick thus far and was starting to worry as they were fairly distracted by the two Einhanders and wondered why it wasn’t showing up to take advantage of the situation.

The ewe thought it was strange she saw no crazy zombie sharks, no assassination jellies, grapple krakens… nothing from the sea creature spewing monster, just the local EPs and these two Einhander monsters. Well she wouldn’t worry about it until it became a problem…. wait… where were all the regular EPs that were chasing them, why were they suddenly only dealing with the Einhanders? They had been under constant attack until the Einhanders showed up.

Not getting much more time to think, Dolly quickly fired off a burst from the flight pack that slid them out of the way of the swinging red blade as the Black Einhander swiped for them.

Having missed the initial swing, the black Einhander matched their speed. That it was doing so by flying in reverse was an eye opener as it started tried to swing the energy blade back for them with its arm.

Dormarch quickly angled the claws on the right arm outwards and swung to catch the blade by the emitter and the black Einhander started boost into us trying to press the blade closer to them.

While the black Einhander was forcing the energy blade slowly towards them, it pushed the Metal Hound 002 against the left guard wall of the highway and the blue Einhander started positioning itself to fire its heavy machine cannon at them.

Dolly managed to pivot Metal Hound 002 to give Dormarch the chance to spin up the sweeper saw and attacked the black Einhander arm holding onto the energy blade with it. After that Dolly pointed a digit on her left paw at the blue Einhander preparing to unloaded and shred them.

“Fire!” A shine from the new materia in her skateboard helmet and a second later, an impossible to dodge explosion of flames surrounded the blue Einhander throwing off its aim and the magical attack seemed to have stunned it for a bit in the air. It seemed slightly resistant to fire magic, but that didn’t mean it didn’t do damage or heavily scorch the armor.

The black Einhander quickly let go of the energy blade with its claw and flew back to avoid taking too much more damage from the saw, this made the energy blade weapon drop onto the ground forced the black Einhander to go back and pick it up.

Dolly forced them away from guard wall and towards the center of the highways road avoiding a burst of machine cannon fire from blue Einhander as it managed to stabilize itself in the air.

Dormarch retaliated by firing the five missiles, four straight and one aimed higher than the rest. The one aimed high in the air disappeared into the storming sky while the others turned and flew straight at the blue Einhander.

The blue Einhander avoided the proximity explosion by diving at the missiles while shooting them down with its machine cannon and then proceeded to try and strafe its opponents with the downwards point heavy machine cannon that pockmarked the wet road with holes.

Dolly angled them to skid to the near the right guard rail using the flight pack, said flight pack started sputtering out and spewed a few flames.

“It be a good thing it is raining, don’t be wanting that to catch fire.” Shanty commented as she slung water blade at the blue Einhander and it dodge the blades swiftly.

“Yeah, the rain isn’t helping the damage it’s taken…” Dormarch stated as he started firing both guns at the blue Einhander while the missiles were cycling, he was trying to force it to not be able to get a direct line of fire on them. “Come on… Shanty fire a water blade beneath it.”

The blue Einhander continued to prove to be nigh impossible to hit with projectiles from the Metal Hound 002’s machine gun and machine cannon, but Dormarch now knew that the Einhanders were not particularly capable of dealing with magic very well.

Dormarch started to fire to either side of the Einhander and brought both projectile streams inwards, this plus Shanty firing a blade of water caused the Einhander to fly up and into position.

“Float!” Pom called out having Dolly share that particular magic spell with her once Dormarch told her what he needed her to do, she had been mumbling the spell to cast it over the last few seconds.

The Einhander suddenly lost control in the air and started spiraling in place and unable to fly anywhere as Metal Hound 002 shot past it underneath, still hydroplaning along the road at dangerous high speed using the flight pack to keep its momentum going.

Dormarch poured several shots into its body with the guns and damaged the Einhander’s limited armor across its wings and torso, armor that was doing slightly better than the Metal Hound 002’s was at the moment.

Metal Hound 002 continued onwards leaving the blue Einhander floating in the air and the one missile Dormarch fired high into the air earlier finally finished its arc and came down from above in a well-aimed artillery strike. The missile struck the Blue Einhander damaging the left wing and the explosion slammed the bottom of its dolphin torso and the heavy machine cannon into the street for further damage before it floated back into the air trying to regain its mobility. It was going to be quite stuck until float wore off.

The black Einhander swept forth and started to fly sideways, it focused on its prey and ordered several gunships, it ordered motorcycle troopers to be thrown onto the highway by the Brutes and wanted Moon Cell Watchers to harry it before it could move in to assault the target. Targets were proving quite problematic, however it marked the flight pack for destruction and sent its orders out to the EPs to focus on it.

Turning so that they were skidding sideways to face the large tower in the distance, Dormarch dumb fired five more missiles in the direction of the tower and they watched as the rockets flew into the distance and then five explosions were seen as they were quickly shot down by the anti-air defenses.

“Darn it, the anti-air defenses must have been reworked to detect the dumb fire missiles.” Dormarch grumbled and looked around in the air for the black Einhander and saw a different problem. “More incoming EPs!”

“Huh… no we can’t take much more of this Ocellus, please at least tell me you’ve at least taken the walls or gave Canard some backup support!” As Pom talked to Ocellus, Dormarch was burning through Gunships and Moon Cell Watchers with as many missiles and gunfire as he could fire and the sound of motorcycles could be heard on approach from behind. “Look… can we talk later if we’re still alive? Kind of busy here."

The black Einhander came soaring in from the left and Dolly quickly reoriented them to face it, Dormarch tried to catch the beam blade by the emitter with the right claw again.

Instead of fully continuing its swing, the black Einhander pulled back and slashed off the claws on the right arm and nicked the rotating barrel of the machine cannon that started fired point blank at it forcing it back to avoid the shots. The flying machine dashed to the left of the machine cannon fire blazingly fast, it had dodged most if not all of all the shots even at this range. It tried to blast forward to stab them all through with the large red beam blade.

“Yeah, we’re bugging out.” Dolly changed their flying direction to straight up and back, out of the way of the blade the tried to follow them until Dolly swooped below it and it skittered off the indestructible paralance.

Retreating from the incoming motorcycles and even more Moon Cell Watchers, Dolly flew them down into the streets heading outwards for the cities edge.

The black Einhander already in middle of making another swing for them and the blue Einhander quickly was catching up and almost ready to fire its heavy machine cannon again.

Just when the large red beam sword was about to run them through Shanty deflected with a cutting arc swipe from her cane scythe, the energy of the cut actually deflected the black Einhander back for a second. A second wasn’t really nearly long enough to do anything though as it was already on them again.

Blue Einhander rained heavy machine cannon fire down on Metal Hound 002, most of it avoiding being aimed the paralance given it just deflected everything and successfully managed to get several shots through that opened rents in the armors badly damaged sparking and flight pack constantly billowing smoke.

Shots tore at the right leg and started tracing their way up the armor towards the flight pack again before Dolly managed to veer it out the path of the stream of shots. They nearly got sliced in apart by the beam blade wielded by black Einhander as the Metal Hound sluggishly dodged back from trying to get into an alleyway.

Pom took control of her front left leg and fired off a thousand spear, for all the good it would do… the jet of air and force slammed into the exposed wiring form when Dormarch managed to glance the emitter with the saw earlier. The red beam sword temporarily cut out mid swing and turned fully back on.

Opening her mouth Pom unleashed a concentrated Howl Blast, focusing the cone into a concentrated bark of explosive magical energy that blasted the black Einhander away and allowing Dolly to get them out of the way of the Heavy Machine Cannon fire.

They were going to have to abandon Metal Hound 002, it just couldn’t take much more punishment… but… they could do some damage when they did.

“Hm… Dolly fly up for the storm!” That odd order from Pom was met with stares from Dormarch, Dolly and Shanty, but the Metal Hound 002 was steered for the sky the black Einhander and blue Einhander quickly following behind them and flying up after them. The black was the more dangerous of the two, but blue Einhander notably had problems aiming the heavy machine cannon straight upwards and both were firing their regular machine cannons as they gave chase. “Dormarch, can the missiles be set to be fired manually by hoof? I only want one with explosives, the rest need to just spew flames long enough.”

Holes were being chewed into the bottom of Metal Hound 002.

“On it.” Dormarch stated having an idea of where this was going.

“Pom…” Dolly gritted her teeth as she kept the Metal Hound 002 on course with some evasive maneuver, but the hits on the armor were mounting and the damage was getting worse by the second. “We’re running out of space here.”

The anti-air defenses around Midgar started to shell the Metal Hound

They were getting closer to the clouds and the violent lightning coming from it.

“Dolly, prepare to eject the flight pack.” Pom at least let Dolly know what the plan was silently.

They dodged to the side as the black came up swinging the large red energy blade and then swerved around to face down at them. Dormarch aimed the machine gun and Machine cannon at it for all the good that would do as it deftly dodged through the constant streams of projectiles.

“Fire!” Dolly shouted and the black Einhander was engulfed in flames stunning it.

The artificial intelligences bheind the Einhander drones weren’t made with getting hit by magic in mind, their computers glitched out for a few seconds every time they got hit and didn’t understand why. This is why the Metal Hound 002 managed to get past the black Einhander before it regained its senses and stopped falling to turn around and immediately started boosting in zigzag back up at them.

The blue Einhander hadn’t ceased firing or tailing the Metal Hound 002 into the sky, it was not trying to get close as it was focusing on using its ranged loadout and it was harder to hit since it had a lot more distance than the black Einhander quickly catching up to them.

“What is being the plan?” Shanty was returning fire with blades of water, for all the good it would do when the Einhanders were dodging all of her attacks. At least she was making it harder for them to attack the Metal Hound 002 with their machine cannons.

“We’re going to try and take one out as we jump for it!” That was about as much as Pom had because she doubted they could get both of them.

“Mom they’re ready!” Pom saw the five missiles hanging precariously out of the five tubes and quickly using a string of wool to grab each missile from the shoulders and bring it to her.

“Dolly, Dormarch, Shanty, the last two are mine… Ocellus I hope you got everything in order, because there’s about to be some fireworks up here.” Pom passed them out and held the last two, she thankfully noted that the missile that was explosive was red tipped and was glad Dormarch thought ahead. “How’s the flight pack looking?”

“The sword wielding Einhander is closing in hot and the flight pack…” The propeller powered flight pack chose that moment to die and it was sparking wildly. There was a loud noise coming from it as electrical surges coming from it increased. “It’s going to blow!”

“We can’t wait any longer, eject it Dolly!” As soon as Pom said it, Dolly didn’t hesitate slammed the flight pack ejection lever down using Pom’s body and they all felt the loud clunking noise as the flight pack ejected from the machine’s back, basically dropping straight down like a lead rock made of the densest materials known to anything and while the damaged and ultimately doomed armor continued upwards out of momentum. They currently didn’t have a method to fly.

A massive explosion happened beneath them and the Metal Hound 002 started falling, it wouldn’t be long before they’d be in range of blue Einhander’s machine cannon when they fell past it. Fortunately they didn’t fall past it… the armor instead hit something on the way down.

The black Einhander had been fairly unfortunate to lose its weapon from the flight pack basically exploding in its face and heavily damaging it’s left wing, what didn’t help it further was the full remaining weight of the Metal Hound 002 slamming into the right wing and embedding into it while destroying all its thrusters on that side from the shock of the impact.

“Go, get on the Einhander!” The world spun and Pom was feeling her stomach lurch, that’s when she noticed the green optical pupil of the black Einhander looking at her and it’s claw lashed out trying to grapple her and instead ripped the seat out of Metal Hound 002 with a surprising show of strength despite having a magitek armor embed in it.

Pom evacuated onto the right wing the claw clapped open and closed twice as it tried to reach forward, unfortunately for it the black Einhander had stopped paying attention to the armor or Dormarch still at the controls.

The saw on the left arm jammed up into the joint of the black Einhander’s claw arm and started shredding into the metal, Dormarch also added machine gun fire to the damage he was dealing to it.

“These things are lightly armored?!” Dormarch stated in disbelief as the black Einhander was refusing to give up with trying to reach for Pom, he jammed the saw further up under the joint to prevent it from managing to reach her.

Dormarch heard some machine language transmit from the black Einhander, being a digital entity he realized what is just said and he sent what was said to his mother immediately.

The black Einhander called itself already KIA and ordered blue Einhander to fire on it and destroy it, also it didn’t want them to reverse engineer it if they somehow took its body in. Strangely intelligent for the large triangular winged one legged dolphins.

“Jump clear, use those rockets to get away from me and land safely, it’s going to come after me!” Pom ordered as she looked up, got wide eyed and then kicked away with all four legs from the falling drone.

Dolly, Shanty and Dormarch had abandoned the falling Metal Hound 002 at the same time as the heavy machine cannon rounds tore through its badly chunked up form and the black Einhander.

The blue Einhander coldly destroyed what was its machine brother in an attempt to take out Pom’s group.

The ensuing explosion scattered Pom’s group in the air still falling back towards Upper Midgar City, its one undamaged digital eye was focusing entirely on Pom and it focused both its machine cannon and heavy machine cannons on her.

Pom had the right of it to kick away from the others, since the killer drone was running on Moon Cell logic. This meant it was absolutely wanted Pom dead and she was a priority target.

Pom quickly opened the paralance to take the torrent of projectiles slamming into her, the paralance once again proved to be indestructible no matter how many heavy machine cannon rounds slammed into it.

The blue Einhander followed its torrent of firing on Pom by doing something odd, it started boosting left and right then tossed its gun up above it. It blasted forth to grab onto the paralance’s protective canopy, angled it so that it could fire its machine cannon at Pom.

Pom flipped around the canopy and then morphed the weapon so the handle was back in her hooves with a little concentration, the claw of the release her upwards and then managed to grab Pom by the waste and started to apply pressure.

This was the most powerful grip Pom has ever felt, if one ever wondered what being put in a hydraulic press felt like then the Einhander’s claw was slowly crushing her even with her wool preventing it from instantly pulping her.

It brought her into range of its machine cannon, seemingly glaring at her with its one green eye as its other dark eye started flickering to life while having a red glowing circle in it.

Pom silently considered herself thankful she still had a grip on the paralance and refused to let go, since she barely managed to move it into position to started deflecting the machine cannon on the blue Einhander’s back.

Pom’s eyes widened when she realized, why the Einhander was still flying straight down and why it had the red eye.

Moon Cell had started currently directly controlling this Einhander thing and intended to plow her right into the ground as hard as it could and possibly blow her up on top of that.

The crushing grip was starting to crack her bones and Pom gritted her teeth trying to concentrate on the explosive missile she stuck to her backside before she jumped. She was glad she stuck it to her butt instead of her currently constrained torso.

Pom was trying to concentrate under the crushing force to get a single strand of wall to aim the missile, her heart was thudding in her chest. She could already see the lights from the city getting closer and inhaled as much as she could, but couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to fully perform a Dancing Flame.

Pom saw no way out of this situation unless she could use the missile on it, but she was starting to black out from the extreme pressure on her body even with her wool propping up the claw slowly squeezing inward.

Suddenly and explosion occurred and Pom felt herself flying horizontally away from the blue Einhander slightly confused, given she still had the both explosive and jet assistance missile attached to her butt.

That explosion had a badly damaged the left wing of Einhander and was now dodging through large missiles that looked vaguely familiar rising up from the ground outside the walls of Midgar City.

Pom heard Ocellus screaming in her ear, her head was a bit muggy and she was quickly regaining focus.

She remembered the missiles trucks in Castle Alexander managed to hit the Einhander without killing her… as lucky as that was she wasn’t out of the woods yet as that hadn’t killed said drone.

Einhander was still trying to come for her through the wall of missiles firing up at it from below, it’s evasion ability had skyrocketed with the red glow of the Moon Cell eye as its claw reached out and caught the heavy machine cannon and aimed it at her.

Coming to her senses, Pom planted the paralance squarely on her back and shifted her wool to glide mode, she couldn’t let it grab her again!

The paralance covered her back in an armor shell as she got struck by a bunch of heavy machine cannon rounds as the Einhander approached her, likely attempting to go for another grab by releasing its more devastating weapon in another attempt to crush her.

Einhander started gunning all the missiles coming up at it and dodging through multiple missiles that barely grazed its frame as it came for Pom like a bat out of hell, all of its jets firing as it focused its gaze unerringly on her and dodged around every obstacle in its way with impossible precision.

Suddenly five strange ships of golden color flew up between Pom and Einhander and started firing missile and energy pulses.

Einhander dodged through all the fire and gunned four of the ships down in the next twenty seconds as a frightened Pom looked back while trying to glide away and put some distance between herself and it.

The new fighters from the Rider Zealots had given her hope and those hopes were quickly dashed, just how powerful were these Einhander things? They were relentlessly powerful!

The last fighter had the heavy machine cannon rammed up into its underbelly by the Einhander and was promptly blown in clean in half, its obvious Rider Zealot shields didn’t do anything to stop that point blank attack.

The brave Rider Zealot AP pilot had opened his canopy and lunged out of his ship and stabbed his energy blade into the forehead of the Einhander and was promptly gunned off by the machine cannon on its back. The Rider Zealots shield barely lasted a few seconds under the strain of constant machine cannon fire that close.

The top of the skyscrapers could be seen passing by as Pom glided for the edge of the city and back towards Castle Alexander.

Einhander wasn’t going to let that happen as it kept shelling Pom and slowing down her horizontal momentum with heavy machine cannon rounds.

If Pom didn’t have the paralance she’d be at her end long before she got to this point… she shifted her wool and moved the explosive red tipped missile down and across her belly and grabbed at it with her left hoof.

Inhaling sharply, Pom prepared for her next maneuver and hoped she could pull it off.

Einhander was upon her again and tossing its weapon up and reaching out to grab her with its claw, Pom could feel the menacing chill in the air as it came for her.

Exhaling explosively, Pom spun in the air and inflated her wool as the claw tried snap shut on her and almost got her hind legs, she slammed them down on top of the claw.

Einhander’s wings angled all their jets for Pom and started to ignite to try and burn her to death, only this was a bad thing for Einhander.

The explosive Pom whipped forward went off and damaged both the wings heavily, afterwards she lunged forward onto the forearm of the claw to avoid the sudden machine cannon fire aimed at her still protected back.

The claw reached back and caught the heavy machine cannon and then held it up and extended it and Pom away from itself as the large claw held weapon started glowing.

“You really want me dead that badly…” Pom muttered in horror, with her heart pounding and her adrenaline shooting through the roof.

The current problem was simple, if she leapt away it would just throw the machine cannon at her and if she survived that it would grab her and crush her and slam her into the ground. If didn’t move she’d still be caught in the blast and the armored claw of Einhander could maybe survive that, she had seen how much trouble that sweeper saw had with trying to cut through black Einhander’s claw.

The Einhander aimed downwards and started blasting for the streets.

It was trying to make a no win scenario for Pom and she was having a hard time trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. Shanty, Dormarch and Dolly couldn’t… well maybe Dolly could fall fast enough, but would could she do?

Apparently a lot since she felt Dormarch, Shanty and Dolly coming in at a blazing speed they shouldn’t have been capable of reaching unless Dolly was burning her momentum controlling ability to its fullest.

Pom inhale slightly and exhaled…

“RrrrrrrrRRRR… YIP!” The arm cracked slightly, but didn’t damage much. The armor was made flexible… unfortunate for Pom given bark breaker was for more rigid materials.

Pom fired a bark blast at the face of Einhander, damage the white face of the machine. The green eye and malevolent red eye didn’t stop staring at what was currently her futile attempts to save her own life.

Pom had to stop it somehow before Dormarch, Shanty and Dolly got any closer, since it might go out of the way to attack them to get at her!

“RrrRRRRrrr-BAHHHHH!” Howl Breaker, had a lot more effect… but still not enough damage and Pom’s throat couldn’t take much more punishment. Pom quickly popped a Hi-potion out of her pack and chugged it down, the thick odd liquids soothed her throat. “RrrRRRRrr-BAHHHHHAAAAGHHH!”

Pom could not hear any sounds, the side effect of her own Howl Breaker had ruined her sense of hearing. This just made her drink another Hi-potion to restore her ability to hear… Pom could… no… not Shock-Ram, she wanted to actually live through this intensely bad situation… somehow. She still had Merak to go after for all of this, Pom continued to cling to the part of the flying death diving machine’s arm where it couldn’t get her.

The Einhander had become even more damaged, but the thing was ridiculous sturdy for the words ‘lightly armored’. It kept on its downward trend towards the street at full speed and there were only twenty seconds or so until the impact with the top of the upper cities road swarming with Brutes, Troopers, Gunships, Guard Hounds, you name it and Moon Cell was bringing all the local EPs in to make sure she died in the ensuing explosion.

Pom glared up into the Einhander’s eyes defiantly and saw a spark of yellow from Dormarch using Search Hunter off to the side and didn’t react or give any sign that she had seen that.

What was he doing? Dormarch had teleported to somewhere, but it wasn’t near where Pom was. She expected him to come for her against her will as she didn’t want him to perish with her. Another teleport, a third teleport… what was going on up there?!

Pom inhaled through her nose and then did the equivalent of spitting in its eyes by blasting out a bark buster, the wad of liquid magic clung to its face and exploded revealing the ugly mechanical workings of the heavily armored face under the mask.

Ten seconds.

Nine…

Eight…

Seven…

Metal Hound 002 with several rockets attached to it igniting and slamming right into the side of Einhander with several explosive rockets sticking out of the five tubes on its shoulders.

Six…

The armored machine had lodged itself into Einhander as it seemed to continue its glare not caring about the magitek armor with explosives about to go off when it hit the ground.

-Pom-

Dormarch told me to kick away with Dancing Flame as hard as I could, he wanted me to trust him… I did.

I started inhaling.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Lungs full off air to bursting, I coiled the wool on my legs into a spring shape and then…

Two…

One…

I just wanted to live… a mostly normal life!

The world exploded as did the air exiting Pom’s on fire lungs as flames shot out of her mouth in an incredible volume helping propel her leap in a small chance to clear the explosion.

Pom was in too much shock to even begin to understand what was happening, there was no way she should even be capable of breathing fire!

Then she hit the ground rolling before her forehead slammed into something.

-Aftermath, five minutes later, Dormarch-

That crater was humongous, I doubt mom would have survived it had she been in the center of that blast.

“Mom, speak to me, MOM!” Mother started coming to and she smiled weakly at me as she cupped my face with a hoof and nuzzled my forehead. “You have to drink this, we need to move fast… the EPs are almost on us and Dolly and Shanty are sure taking their sweet time with getting here.”

I tipped the entirety of the Hi-potion into her mouth and she greedily drank it down almost like it was an afterthought or she wasn't even thinking at all, I then followed that up by stuffing the last Sitrus Berry we had down her throat and manipulating her body somewhat like Dolly did. The healing didn’t help with the trauma, but Mom was alive and might be capable of walking now.

I was making sure Mom got up from the explosion, just because she had the mysterious indestructible paralance protecting her back did not mean the metal didn’t reach scorching heats and fried her.

“You’re my wonderful little Dormy…” Mom was still in a complete daze and not thinking straight, but she was rather affectionate and I appreciated said love even if now wasn’t a time to be sitting still and receiving it. After such a powerful and quite jarring explosion like that one, this kind of traumatic daze was understandable.

I barely managed to drag Mom away quickly enough the first time before all the gather EPs swarmed where she had landed.

I think my heart stopped when I saw her barely clear that explosion and… was she breathing fire there at the end? No, that had to be my imagination and I had to have been confusing it with part of the explosion.

We lost the visor to communicate with Ocellus, we’re on our own and we don’t know the status of the others in the lower city or outside the walls… I think mom knew something, but it would be a while before she could regain her sense to tell me what she was talking to Ocellus about.

I just had to ask Dolly through our bond, but I was getting nothing but fear from her end of it.

“What is taking you guys so… oh…” I received the news that Dolly and Shanty had been on their way and had come under attack by unknown, yet familiar faced, biped crow crackling with purple energy. I stated what I knew to be true, much to my horror the name of their opponent. “Lu Bu.”

Yeah I can see why Dolly was terrified, why won’t that guy just leave us alone? At least Shanty had some Ethers and a few Hi-potions on her, plus an entire Navy's worth of rum and who knows how she keeps it on her at all times.

Shanty and Dolly were going to need them and more, I had to get Mom out of here before those kill squads summoned by Moon Cell find us. After the battle with the Einhanders, none of us were in good shape and they had lost Metal Hound 002… then again it had done as he wanted when Dolly gave him permission to ram into Einhander.

He prayed for a small miracle to not get noticed by EP patrols as he kept dragging his mother’s barely aware form, practically wearing the paralance like a turtle shell, away to marginally safer places.

Author's Note

Moon Cell almost go Pom this time.

The Einhanders while impressive even as drones... in the game 'Einhander' they were supposedly designed with the express purpose of not surviving their mission or coming back from it even after succeeding.

Fire breathing? Dolly is the one holding onto the Ifrit materia though...

This one took a while... I'm a resting now.

Went through a birthday recently, decided to celebrate with another stupidly long page.